Tooltips for Toolbar Icons with macOS

Developers Ruby API
3

This is what ChatGPT responded with in answer to my question:

You’re not doing anything “wrong” in that snippet — you’ve run into a long-standing SketchUp-for-macOS toolbar/palette bug/limitation, not a Ruby API usage issue.

What’s going on (macOS)

On macOS, extension toolbars are those floating Tool Palettes. There’s a known issue where:

  • If a palette is horizontal (snapped to the top edge), tooltips don’t show. SketchUp Community+2SketchUp Community+2
  • Switching orientation often requires a SketchUp restart before tooltips behave again. SketchUp Community+1
  • Related: “hover/press feedback” and command appearance updates are also inconsistent for plugin palettes on macOS (validation/state/visual response not updating as expected). GitHub+1

SketchUp’s own API issue tracker has this logged as an API/UI bug affecting tooltips, status bar text, and command appearance for plugin toolbars (palettes) on macOS. GitHub

Why your icon doesn’t “darken/depress” like Windows

Windows and macOS are using different native UI implementations for these toolbars/palettes. On macOS, extension palettes have multiple documented UI behavior gaps (including the “pressed/highlight” and command-state rendering). GitHub+1

If what you really want is a “toggled/checked” look (not just a momentary press effect), the intended API mechanism is a validation proc:

cmd3.set_validation_proc {
  tool_active? ? MF_CHECKED : MF_UNCHECKED
}

…but note: on macOS palettes this has historically been unreliable (it’s part of the same family of issues). GitHub+1

One small code nit (not the cause, but worth fixing)

This line:

toolbar = toolbar.add_item cmd3

add_item returns an integer id, so that overwrites your toolbar object. Prefer:

toolbar.add_item(cmd3)

Again: this isn’t what’s breaking tooltips; it just prevents you from adding more items afterwards.

Practical workarounds you can suggest to Mac users (today)

  1. Keep extension palettes vertical (dock to the left side) if they want tooltips. SketchUp Community+2SketchUp Community+2
  2. If they change orientation, quit + relaunch SketchUp to get tooltips back. SketchUp Community+1
  3. If you want better “remembered” palette behavior, prefer toolbar.restore over toolbar.show (more about visibility/positioning than tooltips, but it’s the recommended pattern on Mac). SketchUp Community
  4. Encourage power users to place a few critical commands in the main (top) toolbar via Customize Toolbar, since the worst behavior tends to be with separate extension palettes. GitHub

Bottom line: your command setup is fine; the tooltip + visual feedback problems you’re seeing match a known macOS palette issue in SketchUp.